...no, I'm not going to 'blog about dinosaurs today. Bahahahaha!!! Eat it, suckers!
It's no secret that I've had a fairly rough week, and I was really hoping for some R&R this morning before going to work. I had envisioned myself sleeping in 'til 10 o'clock and then then 'blogging until about 11 or so and then sleeping some more and/or playing World of Warcraft until I needed to leave for work. However, during/after the events of last night, my friend Bryan invited me to have breakfast with him and then go rock climbing on the Greenbelt. Not being much of a climber myself, I figured breakfast sounded great, but I would try to pull a Chris Chan when it came to going to the Greenbelt. (For those unfamiliar, "pulling a Chris Chan" is when you get offers from people that invite you to things and you agree to show up but then go do something completely different. It's named after my friend Chris Chan. He does this sometimes.)
Bryan supplied the bacon and I brought the biscuits and eggs and we made a grand time of it. I caught him up on my week and we talked about scissor bacon and the ratios of hospitals to oil rigs in West Texas. It was awesome. And then, just when it was time for me to weasel my way out of the day and go on about my business, it occurred to me: of all the things he's cramming into that giant mountaineering backpack, some of them are for me. He was packing extra harnesses and shoes and water bottles and so forth, I guess because he assumed that since I had said "Yes, Bryan, I would like to go climbing with you," that I had meant "Yes, Bryan, I would like to go climbing with you."
I don't want to give the impression that I was unhappy about all of this because I love Bryan and I've always wanted to climb with him, I just didn't think that I was actually gonna follow through with it today. Like I said, it's been a rough week and I really just wanted to go home. I've done a good job intentionally putting myself in the company of other people this week, and I felt like my social quota had been reached. I was ready to be at home, around my own stuff, and not have to step out of the way for every pretentious Greenbelt jogger in Austin and, literally, their dog.
Nevertheless, within an hour, I'm standing at the top of a fifty-foot cliff and wondering how I went from not really feeling like being social to out in nature doing something I have no experience with. I'm still not entirely sure. I think it was just 'cause I was invited and I never actually said "no." But anyway, I'm standing on this cliff and I'm seeing very small people who were not that far away twenty minutes ago and I'm watching Bryan tie knots and talk to some other guy using words I don't understand because (I'm sure) they refer to some aspect of climbing and/or climbing gear with which I am completely unfamiliar. At this exact moment, it occurs to me why Bryan has asked me how I'm doing about five times in the last fifteen minutes, because I it hits me just exactly how vulnerable I am and why. I'm wearing this external jock-strap thing that's "secured" into something else by a clippy-deal that looks slightly bigger than the one I use to hook my keys to my belt-loop when I'm walking upstairs and I don't have a free hand. I don't know or understand exactly what we're about to do, but I know that there's a rope and gravity involved, and that's about it. My safety and well-being are currently at the mercy of the rock underneath me and are about to be transferred into the hands of Bryan's ability to tie a proper knot. I realize that, basically, I got here because I followed Bryan.
A process fires off in my brain that plays out something like an alternate reality and I think about how I would have handled this exact same situation eighteen months ago. Nothing about these circumstances are in any way under my control. If at any point, Bryan runs out of ideas and asks me what I think we should do, we're totally screwed. I didn't get us here and I can't get us out. Whatever security is to be had in all of this has next-to-nothing to do with me. I don't know if this makes as much of an impression on you as it did on me, but for an alcoholic, this is exactly why I used to drink.
I don't know where I am and I don't know how I got here and I don't know how I'm going to get down. As long as I can have a drink and "settle my nerves," I'll be okay, but make me face this sober and I will metamorphose into a nine-headed monster that you've never seen before in your life. I will cry and rage and beg and shout and swear and bargain until I am absolutely blue in the face, but for the love of Almighty God himself, don't make me do this. Please don't make me do this.
And, strangely, as quickly and quietly as I saw the thought form, I saw it pass. Bryan is my best friend and I trust his climbing skills implicitly. There is nothing up here to throw Bryan off balance or scare him to death. He got us up here and he is going to get us down. He's got all the tools he needs to make sure that all goes according to plan. All I have to do is watch what he's doing and do it exactly the same way. My body and my brain are about to completely revolt against me because I'm about to ask them do something that goes against all of their safety protocol to observe Rule 0 ("Don't die"), but I'm doing to do it anyway because I can trust Bryan.
The parallels with faith and recovery are too easy to spot, so I'm not going to waste time or insult your intelligence by picking through them. I didn't really leave my house this morning looking for a sermon illustration, anyway. But this happened to me today and I had a realization about myself in it and I'm glad I went along for the ride. I guess maybe all I can say is that this is the kind of thing that happens when you're willing to walk outside your front door. And maybe that's all I needed for now.
See you Monday.
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